Our First Month

This past Sunday, Feb 12, marked one month since we moved to The Philippines! It has gone fast, and we are still working on settling in to our new life and home. I will try to give a brief summary of the past month.

After our visitors from Singapore, we had about a week, and then we got to have more visitors. A delegation from the Foreign Mission Committee came out for about 10 days. Rev Allen and Crysta Brummel, from Heritage PRC in Sioux Falls, SD, and Mr. Alan DeBoer, an elder from Doon PRC in Doon, IA. The Brummels stayed with the Kleyns, and Mr. DeBoer stayed with us. We had a splendid time with them; the men had quite a few meetings and we also had plenty of time to visit and fellowship with each other. Rev Brummel also helped out with preaching and giving a speech, so that gave my husband and Rev Kleyn a lighter load during their time here.

The delegation meeting with the consistory of Maranatha PRCP.Sharon and Crysta keeping the kids entertained during the meeting.Our kids loved Mr. DeBoer!
Some other day to day things:

We’ve already had several trips to the hospital/clinic since arriving, so we are figuring out healthcare pretty quickly. 🙂 We’ve also had many many bug bites, a couple skinned knees, some bumps on the head, falling out of trees, and so on…so basically, we have very active, normal children! 🙂

We decided we arrived at the perfect time, because the weather has been beautiful! This is the cool, dry season, so it’s been very pleasant. Occasional humidity, but we can’t complain. We’re trying to mentally prepare for the hot season, which typically starts in March. (Think 100*F 😳)

Kiley, Gabe, and Kirsten are staying cool by splashing in our pool.
Rev is doing a fantastic job driving in Manila traffic. Most times it seems like nobody is following any of the traffic laws, or at least, very few of them. Although, it’s hard to tell how many laws there actually are. But, amazingly, everyone seems to know how it works, and we all manage to get where we are going. I have not attempted driving yet, but I’m sure I will have to try soon. We are learning our way around, too. It’s a bit confusing, but we know how to get to several key places…Provident Church, the mall, the bank. We did attempt going out one night to run some errands with all the kids, and I would sum it up as bordering on disastrous. It was crazy busy and kids were sick of it almost immediately. Usually, the Kleyns are gracious enough to watch the kids for us so we can get groceries…that works much better. 🙂

Well, that’s all for now. We are eager to see what God has in store for us in our second month.

China-Mart (Wal-Mart) has a tire inflation kit that consists of the Green Slime and a small? air compressor that runs on 12v (cigarette lighter). Cost is approximately $20 – $25. I have one of these in each of my cars.